Sunday, April 29, 2012

Dreams of the everyday housewife

On May 20, 1997,
Roseanne Barr Pentland Arnold Thomas (which I am hereafter shortening to
Roseanne) wrapped up nine seasons of her enormously popular self-titled television
sitcom with a page right out of the Newhart playbook: the entire run of
the show had all been a dream. What had
played enormously funny on Bob Newhart’s 1982-90 series (with the main
character on that show, Dick Loudon, revealed to be Bob Hartley, the main
character on Newhart’s previous 70s sitcom) didn’t quite go over too well with
regards to Roseanne…and though some might argue that would entail a double
standard with regards to gender I think the reason why fans of Roseanne’s
sitcom were disappointed is because they saw the series as a far more realistic
program—almost like pages from their own family’s scrapbook. (Newhart, on the other hand, rarely
had any loftier pretensions than being an updated version of Green
Acres…with the classic premise of a sane man trapped in a town
populated by zanies.)

And yet if the two shows were opposite one another in
reruns, I’d tune into Newhart as opposed to Roseanne. I probably need to get this out in the
open—while I don’t dislike the sitcom (it was without question one of the most
groundbreaking family comedies in the history of the cathode ray tube), I
rarely watched it during its original network airing; in fact, it wasn’t until
I viewed some of the episodes on Mill Creek Entertainment’s re-release of Roseanne:
The Complete Fourth Season a few days ago that I was surprised I had
seen more of the series than I remembered.
When I moved back to Morgantown, West Virginia in the winter of 1992
(what has now become known as my “years in exile”) and stayed with my BFF The
Duchess for a year before getting a place of my own, I apparently watched Roseanne
more than I remembered…The Duchess was a big fan of the show, and so I probably
just happened to be in the living room when it was on. (The dysfunctionality of Roseanne’s TV family sort
of mirrored that of my friend’s…though I imagine it duplicated a lot of other
real-life clans as well.)

The Halloween shows on Roseanne were legendary...so much so that people joked the reason why the family was always in trouble financially was that they blew the household budget on costumes. (John Goodman deadpanned on Larry King's show one time that Halloween was the family's "religious holiday" because "they're Satanists.")

Before her sitcom premiered in the fall of 1988, Roseanne
was a successful stand-up comedienne whose schtick was wry observations about her
life as a housewife and mother (or as she liked to call it, a “domestic
goddess”). She had appeared on both the
Johnny Carson and David Letterman shows, not to mention an HBO production (The
Roseanne Barr Show) which nabbed her an American Comedy Award as
Funniest Female Performer in a TV Special.
This laid the groundwork for the series that eventually became Roseanne;
executive producers Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner wanted to create a “no perks”
family comedy for TV and commissioned writer Matt Williams (who had worked on
domcom The Cosby Show) to write the pilot. Roseanne was hired to star in the series and
according to record she and Williams worked in tandem to fashion the character
on her standup act. But when the series
debuted on October 18, 1988,
Williams received sole credit (as dictated by the Writers Guild) as creator,
and Roseanne cried foul. Slighting
Roseanne for her contributions to the show sparked a war that lasted pretty
much during the show’s entire run; Williams was soon ousted by ABC as executive
producer (Williams swore he’d never again work with another comedian but
changed his mind after meeting Tim Allen, creating Tim’s hit sitcom Home
Improvement) and a revolving door of producers and writers soon become SOP on
the show. By the end of the first season
Roseanne
was an certified smash, and ended up ranked as the #2 series in TV Land according
to the A.C. Nielsen ratings. (It became
the most-watched show among TV audiences in the season that followed, and spent
five additional years among TV’s top ten shows as well.)

The tumultuous history behind Roseanne could be the
subject of a blog in and of itself, so I should probably concentrate on the
sitcom in general (and its third and fourth seasons, the DVD sets I was asked
to review). For those of you not
familiar with the series, Roseanne played Roseanne Connor, a housewife living
in fictional Lanford, IL who maintained a blue collar household (I know
Roseanne was never comfortable with the term “blue collar,” but she’s got her own damn blog, so she can bitch about my using it over there) with husband Dan (John
Goodman), a struggling contractor, and three children—daughters Becky (Lecy
Goranson) and Darlene (Sara Gilbert) and son D.J. (Michael Fishman). The Conner clan were unabashedly working
class, which was undeniably part of their appeal to many viewers; throughout
the series’ nine years on the air Mom and Dad Conner worked a series of
low-paying thankless jobs while attempting to start their own small businesses
(sometimes without success)…and the emphasis was always on the struggles (and
tiny triumphs) of getting by. The kids
fought like cats and dogs and were fearlessly mouthy toward their parents—who
reacted to all this with a refreshing sardonic scorn—but as is the case with
most families, there was no denying the love and affection under the sarcastic
surface.

Jackie, Dan and Roseanne react in horror when they discover that Becky has gestured that the school is "number one" in "Bird is the Word," one of my favorite Season 3 episodes. (I relate to this because a similar incident occurred with my graduating class' group yearbook picture...though I cannot stress enough that I did not participate in such shenanigans.)

In the early years of Roseanne, the titular character
worked at a company called Wellman Plastics along with her sister Jackie Harris
(Laurie Metcalf) and best friend Crystal Anderson (Natalie West). Roseanne’s tenure at Wellman lasted a single
season (she had a falling out with a newly hired foreman, played by “Lazy” Fred
Dalton Thompson, and walked off the job along with Jackie and Crystal) and by
year two was working a number of menial jobs (including telemarketing and fast
food cashiering) before landing a gig at a salon sweeping up floors. In Seasons 3-4, things started to look up—she
was hired by a department store luncheonette as a waitress, creating conflicts
with her boss Leon Carp (Martin Mull) and cementing a friendship with co-worker
Bonnie Watkins (singer Bonnie Bramlett).
Dan, on the other hand, continued in the contracting/drywall business
until the end of Season 3, when an old pal named Ziggy (Jay O. Sanders) talked
him into buying a custom motorcycle shop…and then left town, never to be seen
on the series again. (In his defense, he
did leave behind an envelope containing $20,000.) The following season then concentrated on the
efforts of Dan to keep his new motorcycle business afloat…but living in a
financially depressed community like Lanford, it would not prove to be easy.

Everybody's gotta start somewhere: at left, Alyson Hannigan (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, How I Met Your Mother) plays one of Becky's girlfriends in "Like, A Waitress." At right, the stupefyingly popular Leonard DiCaprio can be glimpsed as one of Darlene's classmates in the "Home Ec" episode. (Both episodes are from Season 3.)

From the time Roseanne first went on the air, its
star battled constantly for creative control, and in an interview on the Season
4 DVD set she talks about how the fourth season marked the point when the show
started to hit its stride. I have a
minority opinion on this: while I still think the show was funny, I’ve always
preferred the earlier seasons when Roseanne was less interested in
making a statement every week and was content to just make me laugh. I don’t say this to denigrate the
accomplishments of the show; it tackled subjects that at that time were
considered third-rails on TV, including birth control, teen pregnancy, abortion
and domestic violence. It fearlessly presented
strong, positive female role models—not to mention gay characters—and refused
to cast the lead characters with stereotypical “pretty people”; Roseanne and
Dan Conner were schlubby but unpretentious, looking pretty much the way normal
parents did.

But by Season 4, Roseanne’s quest for realism had
an effect on the show’s laugh content—it seemed so wrapped up in its own drama
that it frequently forgot how the preceding season was able to strike a balance
between the two. I don’t fault the star
for this—it was her sitcom and she was certainly entitled to take it in
whatever direction she chose…but it sort of became apparent in revisiting it
why I gradually drifted away (save for the occasional Halloween episodes, which
became one of the show’s hallmarks). The
creative minds behind the series fashioned a pair of brother boyfriends for
Roseanne’s daughters (one of them introduced in Season 3, the younger the
following season) that soon became my least favorite characters on the show—I
understand why they went in this direction; they were drawing a parallel
between how Roseanne dated a guy her parents felt wasn’t right for her and how
both Becky and Darlene were going to fall into the same trap. But there was a marked difference between the
Healy brothers (played by Glenn Quinn [Mark] and Johnny Galecki [David—though
in his first episode he’s referred to as “Kevin”]) and Dan Conner. Dan was funny.

In fact, watching John Goodman’s antics on Roseanne
is one of the reasons why I’ve never completely abandoned the series; I thought
his Dan Conner character was one of the show’s real joys—a father who acted like a fourth kid (something the critics kind of chided the series about) but
stepped up to the plate when responsible parenting had to be done, and didn’t always make
the right decisions (he’s one of the most fallibly human fathers in boob tube
history). Goodman had a first-rate
chemistry with his leading lady, and his dry, throwaway delivery of many of his
lines never failed to convulse me.
Laurie Metcalf, who played the part of Roseanne’s long-suffering sister
Jackie, was the other reason why I liked the show. In so many ways, Jackie functioned as the
sanest member of the family; a funny, intelligent woman whose low self-esteem
issues were borrowed from the most unlikely of sources: classic television
deputy Barney Fife. (Roseanne reminisces
in the Season 4 DVD interview that they were inspired to make Jackie more Barney-like,
even to the point where actress Metcalf would often lunch with Don Knotts and
pepper him with inquiries on how to “Barney-ize” her character.) If you don’t believe me, check out the Season
4 Christmas episode “Santa Claus” for Metcalf’s first-rate imitation of the Fife
character (“Any deviation from this procedure will result in loss of candy cane…”)

A Lucy and Ethel for the 90's: Laurie Metcalf and Roseanne in a riotous Christmas episode where they play a department store Santa and Mrs. Claus.

The source of some of my issues with the Roseanne
series is that they always seemed to replace the characters I was fond of with
characters I didn’t even want to be friends with in real life. I genuinely liked
Roseanne’s pal Crystal but they started to phase her out by the end of the
fourth season (after marrying her to Dan’s father, played by Ned Beatty, in
Season 3) and she only made a handful of appearances after that. On the bright side, the annoying personage of
Arnie Thomas (played by Roseanne’s one-time real-life spouse Tom Arnold…whose
career in show business is the strongest argument I know of that it’s possible
to sell one’s soul to Satan) would soon disappear by the end of Season 4 (he
turned up in an additional installment the following season and then thankfully
never came back) but he unfortunately left Mrs. Thomas behind—his wife Nancy,
played by Sandra Bernhard (always an acquired taste). Some of the series’ main characters also
underwent personality changes, and not for the better; daughter Darlene, whom I
always enjoyed because she gave her TV mom as good as she got, morphed into a
sullen, mopey teenager (inspired by Roseanne’s real-life daughter descent into
gothdom) and threatened to turn the show into a half-hour My So-Called Whine Life.

Legendary rock 'n' rollers Bonnie (Bramlett) Sheridan and David Crosby played lovers on the show and get to sing in this beautiful musical moment from "The Bowling Show."

But I still enjoy watching Roseanne, despite the
star’s forays into real-life wacky—I remember that Duchess and I were watching
a fifth season episode with a mutual friend of ours and upon seeing Roseanne’s
extensive plastic surgery cracked “Well, no wonder her husband’s business is in
the toilet—there’s where the money
went!” (Again, what Roseanne did with
the money from her show was her own business but I found it wryly ironic that
she chose to make herself over despite years of promoting an image that likeability
and personal appearance shouldn’t be considered one and the same.) My mother is also a fan of the show, and
during my convalescence back in March 2010 she’d often tune in when I was
taking a nap. When I told her that I had
obtained review copies of the Season 3 and 4 box sets she sort of rolled her
eyes, prompting me to ask “I thought this was one of your favorites?”

One of my favorite Season 4 episodes, "The Commercial Show." The Conners are picked to be in a commercial for Rodbell's, and at the last minute the director (Rick Dees) substitutes Jackie for Roseanne.

“It is when there’s nothing
else on,” she replied. (She later
amended that she really did like the show…but felt uncomfortable admitting as
such to me because she didn’t want to seem “uncool,” as if this would have been
the first time I noticed.)

All nine seasons of Roseanne were released to DVD by the
now-defunct Anchor Bay Entertainment between 2005 and 2009…and because these editions are OOP, Mill Creek Entertainment has begun re-releasing the
sets (the first two seasons back in September 2011, seasons 3 and 4 this past
April 3) after acquiring the rights from Carsey-Werner Productions. The upside to this is that the first season AnchorBay release featured the
edited-for-syndication shows…the Mill Creek version does not. Season 3 features interviews with Laurie
Metcalf and Lecy Goranson, while the fourth season set is a little more
generous with the extras, spotlighting interviews with Goranson, Michael
Fishman and Roseanne herownself.
(Roseanne also does commentary on two of the episodes, the Halloween and
Thanksgiving-themed escapades, and it’s interesting stuff because she offers up
her own interpretation of the show while having frequent difficulties
remembering the names of people she worked with, something I found kind of
humorous.)

The Mill Creek releases are also being offered at a nice
price at TVFlashbacks.com—and if you mosey over to this page, you can also use
a 25% discount code to pick them up cheaper (but you need to act fast,
cartooners—the deal expires on May 15th).
Of course, if you’re in a gambling mood (and want to avoid the agony of
the Roseanne two-parter from Season 4, where Roseanne and Dan accompany Arnie
and Nancy to Vegas) I have copies of Seasons 3 and 4 to hand out to some lucky
member of the TDOY faithful. Here’s how it works: just send me an e-mail
at igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com with “Roseanne Giveaway” in the subject header
before 11:59 EDT next Sunday (May 6)
and the following Monday morning I’ll pick two winners via Random.org and get
those prizes out to them posthaste. (The
first name that’s drawn gets Season 3, the second Season 4.) These prizes (as well as the review copies)
were generously provided to me by TV
Flashbacks rep Barbara Pflaughhaupt…so the winners will be required to
write her a thank-you note without making fun of her last name. (Okay, I am kidding about that last
part.) So be sure to drop me an e-mail
for your chance to win!

3 comments:

As you no doubt know my husband George was on the show before becoming an emergency room pediatrician, so I have a soft spot in my heart for it. In addition, unlike most people I loved it when those crazy AbFab bitches came to Lanford in the last season.